All that is begins from nothing and emerges into being. Architecture emerges from emptiness. Architecture interprets the lineaments of its situation, revealing them as the power of place. All that erodes with the passage of time - surfaces, spaces, dimensions, materials, structures, technologies, families, cities, people -re rethought, reworked, and reconstructed by architecture as the power of place. I entrust my thoughts to single lines, inscribe them in drawings, and deposit them in the hands of the craftsmen. Our uncertainties are faithfully recorded in the multiple corrections, erasures, and crossings-out that leave their patina on the drawings. The craftsmen sensitively pick these things up, and a dialog develops out of their intricacies. It is rather the things that remain undrawn that stimulate their improvisations. These bring out the skills of each individual craftsman, and their quiet workings suffuse the spaces they build. Between things drawn and things undrawn there lies an unknown domain, in which hands large and small, hands powerful and gentle, hands delicate and rugged strive amongst each other, and nature, space, structure, and material combine in complete harmony and unfold in unlimited diversity. Through their close linkages to the materials and techniques of a certain time and place, old buildings accept the unrefined and the raw, revealing to us a glimpse of architecture's existence in its naked state. When contemporary craftsmanship rediscovers the beauty of structure and material - long overlooked in the pursuit of techniques of homogenisation and cosmetic appeal - and reveals them just as they are, the power of place can be realised, something unachievable in the two-dimensional world of the paper drawing.
Yoshiji Takehara
Yoshiji Takehara is one of the few architects who reinterprets the received traditions of the spatial formation and methods of Japanese architecture to develop contemporary architectural space. With a deep understanding of the materiality of wood, stone, earth, concrete, steel and other materials, Takehara brings them to life through bold structures and precise detailing, achieving masterly spaces that blend inside and outside and marry room with room. In a career spanning thirty years, he has completed 150 works, the majority being private houses.
Takehara sums up his own design philosophy with the word "mu-u", combining the characters for existence and non-existence, and pursues an architecture that, in his words, "begins from nothing, spinning out the lineaments of place and gathering the traces of many hands, to emerge into being." To achieve this, he still hand-draws plans to deepen ideas, tests materials, pioneers new construction methods with his craftsmen, and brings out the best of their talents.
In his own house, House No.101, a work that returns to the origins of his architecture, concrete and wood are intertwined to achieve an unvarnished structural expression. In the Okawa House, a recent work, the unique appeal of wood is brought to its fullest flower though a skillful deployment of eighty different kinds of timber in irregular shapes.
The beauty of the 'naked' structures and materials of Japanese architecture, given life by the hands of contemporary craftsmen - this exhibition articulates Takehara's approach to architecture with the words "naked architecture". Visitors will be able to directly experience Takehara's architecture in the form of a construction made with 400 pieces of pure timber erected within the exhibition space. A great number of his original hand drawings are also shown, and the range of his works completed to date can be perused through the photography of Yutaka Kinumaki, who has continuously documented Takehara's work throughout his career, and though 1-to-100 scale models.
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